How Cubs are prepping for No. 14 pick in MLB Draft

This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

BALTIMORE -- The Cubs picked in the middle of the first round in last summer’s MLB Draft and targeted a polished bat in infielder Matt Shaw out of the University of Maryland.

Shaw was invited to big league Spring Training this year and he has already climbed to Double-A Tennessee. He is ranked by Pipeline as the Cubs’ No. 2 prospect and checks in at No. 29 on the Top 100 list. Shaw is also heading to the All-Star Futures Game.

“The type of kid he is,” said Dan Kantrovitz, the Cubs' vice president of scouting, “the drive and perseverance and the intangibles that he brings to the table give us confidence that he's going to continue to put in the work to reach the expectations that he has for himself and that we have for him.”

The Cubs have the 14th selection in the Draft -- one slot lower than where Shaw was picked a year ago. While the top of the first round gets the bulk of the spotlight, Chicago is confident it can find another impact prospect when the time comes to react to how the beginning of the Draft unfolds.

“Obviously it's different than picking in the Top 10 or Top 5,” Kantrovitz said. “But I still think, given what I know of the player pool, we should be in a position to hopefully get somebody exciting and potentially an impact player.”

Here is a look at the Cubs’ situation for Day 1 of the Draft, which will be aired at 6 p.m. CT on Sunday on MLB Network and MLB.com.

Cubs’ Draft breakdown
First pick and bonus slot: The Cubs’ first overall pick at No. 14 has a bonus slot value of $5,070,700 this year.

Additional first-day picks: The team’s next pick checks in at No. 54 (bonus slot value of $1,641,800) in the Draft’s second round.

Total bonus pool: The total available for the Cubs to sign their picks within the first 10 rounds is $9,802,300. That ranks 19th among the Draft bonus pools this year.

In a recent mock draft, MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo had the Cubs selecting East Carolina righty Trey Yesavage with the 14th overall pick. Mayo noted that Chicago is “leaning college” with their selection, and also mentioned hitters such as 3B Cam Smith (Florida State), OF Vance Honeycutt (North Carolina) and 3B/OF Seaver King (Wake Forest).

That would certainly fall in line with the Cubs’ approach in recent years.

In last summer’s Draft, the North Siders used 17 of their 20 selections on college players and three on prep stars. Across the past 10 Drafts, the Cubs have picked a collegiate player with 10 of their 11 first-round picks. Chicago has reached for high school options in subsequent rounds, including the second round in two of the past three years.

“You just don't know who the group of players that are going to be available when you pick,” Kantrovitz said. “But I do think there's some reasonable depth in this year's talent pool beyond the first round.”

Kantrovitz said he made it a goal to see the top 200 prospects on the Cubs’ board in person, beyond his discussions with the team’s scouts, research and development group and front-office leadership about players and strategies. He noted that the Cubs also tripled their amount of pre-Draft workouts in an effort to gather as much data and information as possible.

“Every year, we want to improve upon the previous process,” Kantrovitz said. “We want to have a data-driven, evidence-backed approach. And we realize that there's also new information and new data coming at us each year that we want to try to incorporate.”